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As the NBA prepared to re-open for business, Mark Jackson began the equivalent of a red-carpet walk into Bay Area sports culture. He visited the 49ers and Jim Harbaugh on Wednesday, and he made plans to stop in at a Raiders practice sometime soon.

First-year head coaches have resurrected the football teams in a season undermined by a lockout. Why wouldn’t the Warriors want to link their new head coach to that pattern?

If Jackson succeeds, it will be because he followed a more significant trend in this region – the Style-Points Diet. The Giants were early adapters, transitioning from meaty Barry Bonds bombast to the fiber-filled regimen of Lincecum, Cain and Pray for a Sac Fly.

The 49ers, once the great choreographers of the NFL, have returned to prominence as farmers behind a plow. The Raiders splurged by acquiring Carson Palmer to play quarterback seven weeks into the season, but Hue Jackson certainly didn’t have elegance on his mind when he promised to build a bully.

Mark Jackson has vowed to turn the Warriors into a defensive team, repudiating the franchise’s long tradition of posing as impartial bystanders when other teams wanted to score.

He believes that the current roster will answer his challenge. The thought of Monta Ellis shutting down guards close to his size and embracing team defense would seem thoroughly preposterous if Harbaugh hadn’t transformed Alex Smith into a dependable, unflappable winner.

Now, it just seems mildly absurd.

At a news conference Thursday, the new Warriors coach spoke somewhat vaguely about his plans for instilling defensive skills in players inclined to shoot first, last and always.

“I saw a team that was incredible on the offensive end and had a great ability to score the basketball,” he said of the tape he had watched, “but took no pride on the defensive end, and didn’t buy in or wasn’t demanded to buy in. … Whatever it is, I see a team that is capable of defending. If I could defend, and not be a trash defender, as slow and as pitiful as I was, but I bought in, then I certainly have guys who are better than I was, so there’s no excuse.”

If that sounds too rhetorical, remember that Harbaugh routinely avoids specific answers in his interview sessions. He revealed his coaching style at the start of training camp, immersing himself in huddles and redefining “hands-on” coaching.

Mark Jackson picked that up immediately when he watched the 49ers practice.

“You watch Coach Harbaugh running around in drills and trash-talking and hugging guys and touching them,” Jackson said of the practice he visited.

Will he join his players the same way? “Depends on how I feel,” he said, half-seriously.

Mark Jackson and Harbaugh were both low first-round draft picks in 1987, and they overlapped in Indianapolis as the Colts quarterback and Pacers point guard in the mid-’90s. Yet they didn’t get to know each other personally, Jackson said.

“He was a big-time star, so he wasn’t paying attention to me,” he said, although Harbaugh apparently suggested otherwise when Jackson met the rest of the 49ers. “He introduced me as him and I being very similar all-time greats, which was quite amusing.”

Mark Jackson has often been compared to Harbaugh’s predecessor, Mike Singletary, because of their limited coaching experience and deep connections to Christianity. But Jackson has one advantage that Singletary lacked. Management guided him toward assistant coaches who could complement his strengths, and Jackson accepted the guidance. Singletary floundered while choosing his offensive coordinator, and his administration never recovered.

When he spoke with Harbaugh, Jackson said, the 49ers’ coach told him to “lean on your staff.” Jackson noted that it was a Biblical reference.

The saying that links them best would have to be “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

Jackson’s team is unlikely to lose too much conventional appeal by adding a strong defensive structure. Given the way a great defense can set up a fastbreak, it might even make the Warriors more fashionable. But to win, the team may have to make a deal for a plodding big man and set the pace more around him than an Ellis or Stephen Curry.

How will that play in the Bay Area, where many 49ers fans see their 9-2 team still longing for another Montana or Young? Jackson might even empathize with them a little.

His favorite football player was Dan Marino. He liked Deion Sanders, and admires Ray Lewis. But the quarterback with the big arm, unsupported by a great running back, drew his attention like nobody else. As a fan, he loved the style.

But what about teams like the 1985 Bears and their remarkable defense? If everyone wants to watch offensive fireworks, what sort of lesson does that send to rebuilding franchises?

“We watched those Bears, because they were the last ones standing,” he said, “and that’s what matters.”